Mediterranean Diet Good for Heart Disease and Cancer

Here's another reason to treat yourself to that Mediterranean trip you've always talked about. You could come back even healthier than when you left, courtesy of the flavourful cuisine you'll be sampling.

A Mediterranean-style diet reduces risk of death from heart disease and cancer, says a recent Greek study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The key is plenty of vegetables, fruits and nuts, legumes, cereals, and monounsaturated fats, especially olive oil, but lesser amounts of red meat, poultry, fish, and dairy products.

After 44 months of studying a Mediterranean diet with more than 22,000 healthy adult study participants, researchers discovered those eating the Mediterranean diet had 33 per cent fewer heart disease deaths and 24 per cent fewer cancer deaths. The researchers concluded that it was the overall diet-not any single food-that accounted for the protective effect.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine, June 25, 2003, pcrm.org.